NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Just 5 percent of U.S. cancer
survivors are meeting experts' recommendations on diet,
physical activity and cigarette smoking, a new survey shows.

But the more recommendations a cancer survivor did meet,
the better his or her health-related quality of life (HRQoL),
Dr. Christopher Blanchard, of Dalhousie University in Halifax,
Canada, and colleagues found.

"It appears that meeting multiple lifestyle recommendations
may not only be beneficial from a cancer recurrence/mortality
perspective, but also from a HRQoL perspective," they write in
the May 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

In 2006, the American Cancer Society issued three
recommendations on healthy lifestyle behaviors for America's
more than 10 million cancer survivors: get at least 150 minutes
of moderate-to-strenuous exercise, or an hour of strenuous
physical activity every week; eat at least five servings of
fruits and vegetables daily; and quit smoking. But research
done in the U.S. and Australia has shown that many cancer
survivors do not follow these recommendations.

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To investigate the percentage of U.S. cancer survivors who
followed the recommendations, and see if doing so had a
relationship to health-related quality of life, the researchers
surveyed 9,105 survivors of six different types of cancer.

Roughly 15 percent to 19 percent were eating at least five
servings of fruit and vegetables daily, the researchers found,
while 30 percent to 47 percent were getting the recommended
amount of exercise. From 83 percent to 92 percent had quit
smoking.

Overall, 5 percent were meeting all three requirements,
while 12.5 percent were meeting none. Fewer than 10 percent of
survivors of any of the six cancer types were meeting two or
more recommendations.

Among breast, prostate, colorectal, bladder, uterine and
melanoma survivors -- all of the cancer types the researchers
looked at - health-related quality of life rose steadily with
the number of lifestyle recommendations met.

In the general U.S. population, the researchers note, an
estimated 49 percent meet physical activity recommendations, 24
percent meet the 5-A-Day requirement, and 79.5 percent do not
smoke -- the one area where cancer survivors in this study were
doing better.

"This suggests that a cancer diagnosis may have greater
potential to be a 'teachable moment' across several cancer
groups in terms of changing smoking behavior, but it may be
less effective in changing physical activity and fruit and
vegetable consumption," the researchers say.